CIVIC MATTERS

IC 98: If you are talking about being nice, giving an apple maybe a nice gesture
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xtina: We went to the Salton Sea and the Salvation Mountain. We met the artist who made this amazing artwork out in that middle of nowhere. He showed us all the art magazines that his project is in. I gave him an apple. It meant something. Who do you give an apple to? In Hollywood they might think it’s an advertisement. In what context do you see something as nice, and when do you see it as something else?

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Sissi: I think it’s about trust. How and who.

Cara: I think it’s the context, but it’s also who you are, your gender, your race and how you dress.

Sissi: I wash apples with soap….
I also think the question is how to get into the feeling of handing over the apple in the right way. By doing it you are saying everyone should be as nice as I. Doing it as an action, then the discussion is more important than the act. Its not just a simple thing.

Robby: Its a simple thing. I worked selling avocados for a farm. Its so easy and fun. Hey – free fruit. Yeah, people have hangups.

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Otto: We were dressed as waiters. We were giving out strawberries with a dancer friend. We were surprised that everyone took them. If we would do it just like that…

xtina: There are people who sell fruit on the streets of LA without permits, its part of a small micro-economy of people in a neighborhood.

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xtina: An apple could have a needle in it.

Marc: Maybe it’s about trust then.

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IC 98: Maybe a commentary of responsibility is always created in a new situation that we get involved in. Like how we went to the gun club yesterday and that is all about trust… like the trust that others aren’t going to shoot you. It’s also about values.

Otto: I don’t think we should do things with apples, I think we should have a conversation.

IC 98: Context based situation, the effects are infinite. This is good and bad public art. Apples are something you eat, very regulated but also symbolic. It is too risky, or it isn’t .My father is a farmer and grows apples for a living. So my perspective is different.

Robby: Why is there an expectation that the apple will make people think I’m a nuisance. There are fun people and jerks in everyday life. That is what I expect in life, reasonably putting it. Apples are nice.

xtina: It seems to be a simple thing; to hand out an apple. I like how it is actually complex and transgressive… to give an apple to a stranger on a street like Hollywood Boulevard.

Marc: I agree that handing out an apple is easy. We are artists. Sissi did an act that was ok, nice even and was arrested. By handing out an apple, we are saying that giving things out is ok . This is what artists do, give things.

Sissi: In a way, with the short amount of time, you have to focus on something small to get anywhere at all.

Cara: I was in the group that chose to focus on apples. You could decide to show it to people, bite it, or give it.

Sissi: there is a Swedish song that goes, “If you have an apple, would you share it with me. And sing an apple melody. Or would you keep it for yourself?”

xtina: I propose that we drink champagne and sing the song and then try to hand out apples.

Cara: Cheap sparkling wine from California. I’m very pleased.

Sissi: When I was in prison, the only think I had to eat was an apple. I made a mistake. They gave us milk, but I’m a vegetarian so I didn’t take it. And then other folks in the cell said that they could have eaten it… they were stockpiling food.

xtina: Do we all agree?

Marc: Do we have to agree?

Otto: A good campaign involves everyone.

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Äppel Sången
(med Mora Träsk)

Om du har eh äppel vill du de la det med mig?

I en äppel melodii

Eller vill dun a ditt goda äppel for dig sjålv?

Och inte finah melodii

Dela med sig, eller snåla?

En endkel fraga far man tåla
Om du har ett äppel vill du dela det med mig?

Eller tar du hela sjålv?

Va

Taxonomy

The cultivated apple, Malus domestica Borkh., belongs to the Pomoideae subfamily of the Rosaceae, along with pear (Pyrus spp.), quince (Cydonia oblonga), loquat (Eriobotrya japonica), and medlar (Mespilus germanica).

Cultivars

Throughout its history of cultivation, at least 10,000 apple cultivars were developed, many of which are now lost. This was due, in part, to the older practice of seed propagation of this heterozygous species. Commercially, there are about 100 cultivars currently being grown, but only 10 make up over 90% of US production. Since 1997, it is likely that ‘Fuji’ and ‘Gala’ have increased in rank, while ‘Red Delicious’, ‘Rome’ and ‘McIntosh’ production has decreased. ‘Braeburn’ and ‘Jonagold’ had not entered the top 10 by 1997, but are currently ranked #6 and #7, respectively, in Washington State, the nation’s largest apple producer.

Cultural or non-food usage

There are many myths and legends associated with the apple. Apples were frequently used in Greek, Roman, Norse, and other mythologies as symbols of immortality or reincarnation.One of the most popular stories pertaining to apples is that of Adam and Eve, who ate the “forbidden fruit” of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the center of the garden of Eden. Actually, the account given in Genesis 2 and 3 never mentions what kind of fruit this tree produced, but numerous works of art commonly depict it as an apple. The Latin noun Malus has the dual meaning of either apple or evil, which probably stems from this Bible story. Apples are symbolic of temptation, perhaps as a result.

Because of the poor transportation that existed during early colonialization of the North American interior, apples were a practical necessity. In order to assure stability of newly established homesteads, the law required each settler to plant fifty apple trees within the first year of staking a claim. John Chapman, or Johnny Appleseed, moved ahead of his fellow colonizers starting nurseries throughout the Midwest by sewing seeds from cider mills in Pennsylvania.

Once his claim was established, he appointed himself a missionary for the Church of the New Jerusalem, a Christian Church based on the Biblical interpretations of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist and theologian. He shared Swedenborg’s religious tracts and his Bible with the settlers who listened to him.

Credit to Leominster Historical Commission

We’re tired of trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They’ve made us suffer too much. . . . Nothing is beautiful or loving or political aside from underground stems and aerial roots, trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They’ve made us suffer too much. . . . Nothing is beautiful or loving or political aside from underground stems and aerial roots, adventitious growths and rhizomes.
—Gilles Deleuze, in Mille Plateaux

Sitting indoors with pockets filled with apples, some decided not to give apples anymore. Some took to the street with a bucket.

Utopian or not- cultural producers- including but not limited to artists, designers, architects, civic planners and curators- mediate subjects through objects. Expanding in an expanded field- no one can say how far anyone or anything can be said or seen to move.

I shrug my shoulders and say, “where to?” Eyes flashing, my legs unfurl, I slide down a thick tree branch, “C’mon man, let’s find out if this God damned garden really ends where another begins.”

The baby liked the apple.

Cara
The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest

Reflecting on the conversations that led up to, through, and following the first phase of Civic Matters I can report that I resist relational aesthetics that simply reflect global information and network structures, but take equal part and pleasure in an ongoing and radically open project in an expanded field.

Where to? We’re getting drunk—imagining online radical primers for kids. We’re picking scabs off one another’s knees and inviting anyone who’ll come along to take a stand, take an apple, and drop through that cool trap door in the floor.

r a k e t a in Los Angeles